FASSC PROFILE.pdf - CUEA

In order to prepare ourselves – staff and students - for a wonderful academic year and to live
as children of the same family (family of God), to benefit from all academic as well as extraacademic
university programmes, to develop our skills and talents, to increase our knowledge
and our intelligence, to help us balance our views, opinions and beliefs, to create a culture of
life, to learn how to work together, we ought to draw our attention to some important issues
pertaining to our academic, social and spiritual life, not only in campus but wherever we are.
There is need to re-visit our duties and obligations, to meditate on our Catholic identity,
assume our prophetic mission of being true Citizens of The Catholic University of Eastern
Africa, ideal citizens of Africa and a people of God - “You will be able to tell them by their
fruits” (Mt. 7:20).
The Faculty desires comprehensive education – physical, spiritual, moral, intellectual, and
social - by giving them equal consideration. However, the realization of this aspiration goes
through birth and rebirth. We should know that education is not learning. Learning is a process
of acquiring knowledge and skills in a specified domain; education, on the other hand, gives
not only appropriate knowledge and skills but also makes us good and more rational. This is a
call to being happy with God and with our fellow human beings in spite of our differences.
Differences only make sense when they are well understood. It is also a call to be good,
intelligent and social.
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences as a Team
The members of the Faculty should live in harmony like team builders. This calls for the
need to enhance our academic collaboration (formally and informally), hence achieve success
in our research initiatives, teachings and publications. We ought to be companions and sources
of blessing to others. The Faculty is therefore setting up structures to enhance this unity.
Partners of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
A quest for intellectual clarity, understanding and teamwork requires profound and
considerate partnership. Partners respect each other and share their concerns as well as their
discoveries. Partnership is the guiding principle of rational appreciation of our differences and
genuine collaboration. Differences are questions that ought to question the questioner. A
question that questions the questioner is more transforming than the one that questions the
object set before it.
2. Academic Life
We begin with academics because we ought to know the reason why we are here as
members of a University or an Institution of higher learning. We are not in a market; we are
not in a farm; we are not in a company or factory; we are not in a supermarket. (These
negations connote some ways of thinking, doing and behaving). There is, therefore, a call to
think, act and behave like people in an Institution of higher learning.
We are here to study and teach. Of course, studying and teaching takes various dimensions
but let all of them be geared towards learning as done in a modern university. As a reminder,
let us know that we are in a Higher Institution of learning (University); staff and students should
therefore keep on learning, so as to rise above street thinking/acting, above inauthentic social
relations, discover ourselves and desire what is desirable. The world is made of negotiable and
non-negotiable things. So, do not negotiate what is not negotiable. For instance, commitment to
our studies and teachings cannot be negotiated, for this is what makes us authentic citizens of
CUEA. We need to be educators. Teaching alone does not make education; imparting